Third day of attempts to elect Speaker of the Parliament

On the third day of the first sitting of Bulgaria's new Parliament, MPs again failed to elect a Speaker. In the first round of voting on October 21, again none of the candidates received the constitutionally required support.

MPs again failed to elect Speaker of the Parliament

Hamid Hamid of the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF) nominated again Yordan Tsonev. "Vazrazhdane" nominated Tsveta Rangelova and "BSP for Bulgaria" proposed Kristian Vigenin.

From the rostrum, Vigenin commented:

"We are provoking ridicule, the Parliament is about to completely disintegrate. People hate us and soon they will start to despise us because we cannot solve problems".

He said Parliament must start working. According to Kristian Vigenin, some of the political groups prefer not to have a Parliament and go directly to elections. "Should we deprive Bulgaria of the billions under the Recovery and Resilience Plan, should we deprive the Bulgarian citizens from adopting an adequate state budget," said Vigenin.

Yordan Tsonev of the MRF said he had no worries about where support for him would come from. I accepted the nomination for Speaker of the National Assembly, because the idea of the parliamentary group of the MRF was in conditions of a very sharp confrontation between the two largest political groups, the third to take responsibility and unblock the process.

The MPs of “Bulgaria Ascending” did not register in the plenary chamber.

In the vote, Yordan Tsonev received the support of 103 MPs. 100 voted against and 23 abstained.

73 MPs voted in favour of Kristian Vigenin's candidacy, 108 against and 45 abstained.

Tsveta Rangelova received the support of 27 MEPs, 95 voted against and 94 abstained.

The votes Yordan Tsonev and Kristian Vigenin were distributed as follows:

Yordan Tsonev - For - 103, against - 101, abstentions - 22.

Kristian Vigenin - For - 75, against - 125, abstentions - 25.

This forced the chair of the sitting, Vezhdi Rashidov, to announce a 30-minute break.

Images by Dessislava Kulelieva